#PPOD: Titan's Surface 🌕

The atmosphere of Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, appears similar to that on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago, before life appeared.

After a seven-year journey on board the Cassini spacecraft, ESA’s Huygens probe reached Titan’s surface, marking the most distant landing ever achieved by a spacecraft. During the descent, its cameras collected data on the dense atmosphere and took the first-ever images of the surface.

These revealed an extraordinary world with lakes, islands, and erosion features similar to those that shape our planet, confirming that liquid methane once flowed there. Methane on Titan is found in liquid form, not as a gas, due to the intense pressure and cold temperatures, about –180° C.

Credit: esa NASA